260°

Forspoken dev says one-second game loads are now a tentative reality on PC

Last Monday, Microsoft declared that DirectStorage would usher in “a new era of fast load times and detailed worlds in PC games.” And while that now seems a little too grandiose, the developer of upcoming tech showcase game Forspoken now claims that one-second load times are legitimately in reach.

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theverge.com
LordoftheCritics757d ago

Excited.

Im glad I picked up the 980 pro

fr0sty756d ago

PC drives still can't outrun PS5's with the Kraken hardware compression in use.

XxINFERNUSxX757d ago

Really fast and I'm ready Win 10 LTSC 21H2 but using a 970 EVO PCIE 3.0 M.2 so either way it still will be very fast to load. What is annoying is that this tech should have been thought about as soon as M.2 drives came to market and not wait until the consoles adopt them. The PC should be as it always is at the forefront when it comes to technology.

neutralgamer1992757d ago

Yes PC market is huge but so is console market share. It's just nice to see both consoles and PC's finally getting aligned and supporting each other in moving the tech forward. Also I feel like console makers have a lot more combined resources for R&D than PC (where set up for each user is very different in comparison on consoles hardware is the same for all users so companies know their target market)

Just be glad it's not left up to Nintendo otherwise we would be getting under powered tech for premium price. N64, GameCube, switch, wiiu and now switch. Not one of these consoles were on par with their competition at the time of release

IanTH757d ago (Edited 757d ago )

To the last point, at least, GameCube was definitely not behind its competition. It was more powerful than the PS2 in general (coming out a year later did help on that front). Both were less powerful than Xbox, but GameCube was easily in the mix power-wise that generation. It was really the Wii that started Nintendo down the path of devaluing performance.

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BehindTheRows757d ago

The GameCube definitely was. It was actually more powerful than the PS2.

neutralgamer1992756d ago

GameCube is one of the most underrated and under appreciated console in my opinion. And OG Xbox was awesome it was way ahead of it's time

Ps1-ps2 had such a huge chunk of the market share that it was hard to compete with PlayStation at that time. PS3 came out stumbling but became if the best systems ever. What's amazing about PlayStation is their home console that sold the least still sold 90 million where as when wiiu failed and Xbox one lost its market share neither came close to that number

That's the brand loyalty power of PlayStation in my opinion. And I hate the fact it's being ruined now by a compete suit in Jim Ryan. He is a numbers only guy. I bought a series X Because I want to be able to play OG Xbox and Xbox 360 games. Sony needs to figure out a way for us to be able to play PS3 games in 2022 on next generation console. That would be a great feature

rlow1756d ago

Don’t forget the N64 was as powerful if not more than the ps1. GameCube was also very powerful for its time. It wasn’t until the Wii that Nintendo jumped off the more power bandwagon.

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Neonridr757d ago

M.2 drives still are for the enthusiasts. More and more people are getting on board due to their prices being significantly cheaper, which is definitely helping.

shadowhaxor757d ago

I disagree partially with this. While M.2 drives are still a bit more pricey than mechanical drives, they have caught up to SATA SSD in pricing. Performance-wise, they blow them away. Now if you're referring to Gen 4 NVMe M.2 drives, maybe. Then again, not everyone has a mobo that can support the new tech.

It will be interesting to see just how far MS can go with DirectStorage, and how many developers take advantage of it.

BehindTheRows757d ago

You mean NVMe. M.2 drives can also come be SATA SSDs, which are cheaper and slower than their NVMe brethren.

Regardless, NVMe prices are definitely coming down, particularly if you're still on Gen 3 like myself, which has a max throughput of 3.5GB/s on the M.2 bus (although even that top speed will never be seen — very similar to that fancy "teraflop" word that many people [particularly console fanatics] love to tout these days).

Neonridr757d ago

@shadowhaxor @BehindTheRows - yes the gen 3 variants are definitely more affordable, even gen 4 is coming down in price too.

I'm just glad we are seeing devs actually start to take advantage of them.

Eonjay756d ago

I disagree with you though about PC being at the forefront. First not everyone is going to update their PC 6 months to a year to be at the bleeding edge. If tha was the case the PC market would be a lot smaller than it is now. Secondly, even if you did have build the most powerful rig, you shouldn't expect for every software vender to be addressing your hardware setup specifically. Thats unrealistic and borderline narsistic. The third thing to keep in mind is that I can go out and buy an Xbox Series X for $500 (not to mention a PS4 digital for $400) and the bang for my buck is gonna be way beyond what I can get on PC in 2022 for $500 (or $400).

neutralgamer1992757d ago

How about no loading please. We had games on OG Xbox and PS2 that had no loading screens yet here we are talking about fast loading in 2022

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bloop757d ago

We have HUGE open worlds like Forbidden West loading in less than 2 seconds and you're actually complaining 🤦🏼‍♂️

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I_am_Batman757d ago

No loading would mean no playing. But joking aside, loading has always happened and will always happen. The only thing that changes is the ratio between the available bandwidth and the size of the memory pool. The reason we're talking about it in 2022 is that we've jumped back to a bandwidth dominated paradigm, closer to the one we had in pre-optical media console generations, while still being in this odd transition period, where cross-gen and PC development has to account for significantly different data streaming capabilities.

DarXyde757d ago

Games were also far less complex back then. Haven't you noticed that open world/sandbox games took much longer (and, to this day, still do)? There's much more going on. Sometimes, it is a matter of optimizing, but load speeds were often a consequence of slow disc read speeds or, if digital, sluggish HDD speeds. Games from ASW for instance always loaded faster than, say Naughty Dog titles. Still holds true today.

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slowgamer757d ago

About time to start using it.

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130°

Most Disappointing Game of 2023

VGChartz's Craig S: "Who doesn't love a good dose of schadenfreude every now and then? There was no shortage of that on offer in terms of video games last year, hidden in plain sight amongst the more genuine disappointments (I'll leave it for you to decide which category each of the following games falls into).

One unfortunate trend when it comes to the biggest disappointments of the last year was that so many were new IPs, including Bethesda's latest major release Starfield, the Arkane Studio B-team's abortive attempt at a co-op vampire shooter, and Square Enix's action RPG Forspoken. Mega-franchise Call of Duty and the perennially delayed The Lord of the Rings: Gollum round out the list of Nominees."

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Profchaos87d ago

I think disappointing and bad are not the same thing.

The article calls out lotr Gollum that was not disappointing it was bad

Redfall is both disappointing and bad.

starfield, MW3 sure disappointing.

But if I was to add some disappointments of the year I'd add

firewall ultra absolutely a dumpster fire that killed the studio.

007 goldeneye the port of the N64 game it's disappointing as we didn't get the rare remaster version and the switch version has very poor controls.

Rdr was not the remake we wanted a simple port that didn't even run at 60 fps on launch on ps5

Jedi survivor Just broken on day 1

coolbeans87d ago

-"The article calls out lotr Gollum that was not disappointing it was bad"

I personally fall on the 'Gollum disappointing' spectrum. Here's why: even though Daedalic Entertainment was hopping out of their point-n-click lane, they *were* a solid group of devs that had an unexpected concept. Those two things, cheering on a dev taking a risk with a brand and the odd-yet-intriguing template, at least made me hope for something decent; instead, it's the reason they're only publishing now.

CBaoth87d ago

But the concept never stood a chance, even in the heyday of the Metal Gear/Splinter Cell days. When this was announced, no one was intrigued by its premise. Fell flat on its face. Even if Gollum had come out to glowing reviews the game would've struggled to perform financially. That's why it's not disappointing, just bad. Had no hype. All the other games Prof listed had the potential to sell great or be reviewed better but failed. Low effort remasters like the GTA collection, the RDR port, and MGS Collection could all sell well but still be severely disappointing. Gollum was uninteresting at concept, terrible in its execution. The result was expected sadly.

-Foxtrot86d ago

Goldeneye is so weird

We got no proper remaster for it despite the fact it was being worked on and it was almost done apparently then the Xbox version didn't come with online play but the Nintendo Switch one did...the Switch...the system where online play is a f***** ballache.

https://youtu.be/6B8ssbyAeR...

RhinoGamer8887d ago

I recently came back to Redfall, my lord...the controls and movement were a disgrace! I felt like my character was drunk. Zero fine movement control. The XBOX producers on this game should be fired.

OtterX87d ago

I think Diablo IV deserves to be on this list. While not the worst made game, it was one of the most disappointing. Many of us had such high expectations for it and it turned out to be so incredibly dull, a slog to play.

Sonic188187d ago

It's basically Diablo Immoral 2.0 with lots of microtransactions

DarkZane87d ago

Diablo 3 was as much as a dumpster fire at launch, but a year later, it became a very good game and was well worth playing. Give Diablo 4 the same time. In a year, it's going to be awesome I bet.

coolbeans87d ago

I was under the impression their most-recent update fits that bill.

OtterX86d ago

K I'll try reinstalling in a year or 2.

I didn't play D3 until after the first year, so I will certainly give it another shot.. especially to try and get my money's worth out of it. But at launch, I was bored out of my mind and uninstalled it.

Sonic188186d ago

That's the biggest issue. Unfinished games with lots of flaws and issues during launch. Unfortunately, most gamers don't forget or forgive that and would rather spend their money on another game

jznrpg87d ago (Edited 87d ago )

Jedi Survivor was disappointing for me because I waited until a month ago to play it and it still has major issues. My saves were getting corrupted so I had to restart an old save however many times and a plethora of other bugs.

Of course there is Redfall Starfield but to me it’s MS overhype underdeliver so I expected it to some extent but not as bad as it was.

Gollum had little to no expectations.

Forspoken was a disappointment but not as bad as it was made out to be especially if you turned on Japanese voice acting. It was a 7 type of game but it looked like it could have been better.

Diablo 4 was scored well at launch but all my friends that loved and played 3 (after years of swasons) up until 4 were disappointed with 4 and don’t play it anymore .

Factions getting canceled was a bit of a disappointment. Not huge as I don’t play gaas much but it was disappointing.

Nintendo not releasing Switch 2 again was disappointing to me. I don’t use my Switch much it’s just so outdated and mosty kiddy games release some more games that I want to play not my kids!

No physical copy for Alan Wake 3 disappointing as hell, actually beyond that it is upsetting (to some extent,I will live of course)

Gamers getting used to owning nothing and renting games is very disappointing. I don’t watch Netflix anymore it’s mosty mediocre crap and rental services will go that direction if allowed.

CBaoth87d ago

this whole gen has been a major disappointment to me. Least amount of gaming I've done since bar/clubbing days. Watching fanboys argue now is akin to a couple of kids fighting over the front seat of a short bus. They can't even argue over games anymore.....cuz there aren't any! With two of the console manufacturers "switching' over to x86 architecture we shouldn't be having these draughts but here we are. And the third happily chugs along selling games on decade old microchips with an OLED screen.

Profchaos86d ago (Edited 86d ago )

X86 is a shared architecture but both run different development pipelines so they still have to Dev for those consoles plus PC and Arm if a switch port is included.

None of this will reduce Dev times games are complex now probably more than they need to be honestly but if every studio takes 3 to 5 or even 10 years to bring out their big titles there's going to be many dry spells

On that note arm processing is far more efficient than x86 I think Nintendo is making the right call sticking with that and we will probably see Sony and Microsoft do the same next gen as more effort is being made to bring arm into desktop space lately

Profchaos86d ago

Being disappointed that Nintendo isn't releasing ultra violent games is like being disappointed that the the next GTA game is open world. Plus totk and Metroid prime remaster did come out this year that's about as violent as they will even get

Im pretty certain that one experiment in publishing devils third is one they would like to forget.

Plus all rumours for the switch 2 places it's release in 2024 they make killer numbers at Christmas if they announce they are making a switch 2 those sales dwindle and shareholders get upset. If a switch 2 doesn't release this year that's disappointing. And if third party's don't develop for it even more so there's zero garuntee they will

I agree gamers getting used to owning nothing is a huge disappointment I don't think many will go silently into that one though

90°

I Hope 2024 Isn't As Bad For PC Ports As 2023 Was

Ahmed from eXputer writes "The quality of PC ports has been seeing a severe decline recently, and many gamers have had enough."

anast128d ago

Switch Forspoken with Redfall.

JEECE127d ago

It can be an unfortunate trend in our industry to lump games people were looking forward to that didn't end up meeting their expectations and were just okay (Forspoken) with games that are broken (Gollum) or little more than asset flips (The Day Before). If expectations (and price) had been set appropriately, Forspoken wouldn't even be that bad.